'Our high school love split tipped gun killer over edge': Childhood sweetheart of Jared Loughner speaks of his descent into madness

Kelsey Hawkes: The only known girl to have dated Arizona shooter Jared Loughner 'wanted to move on'

The high school sweetheart of the Arizona gunman has said his descent into madness began after she broke up with him.

Kelsey Hawkes described how Jared Loughner, whom she dated for a year in 2005 when she was 15, turned from a normal person into a ‘psycho’ when she ended their relationship.

The student claimed Loughner ‘fell apart’ when she said she wanted to move on and looked like he had ‘nothing to live for’.

Over the following months she watched in dismay as her former love began drinking and taking drugs before cutting himself off from their mutual friends.

His warped journey is said to have reached its terrible climax last week when he opened fire at a meeting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, seriously injuring her and killing six others.

Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, Miss Hawkes, 21, said: ‘My breaking up with him was not the cause of him going off the rails but it was definitely the start of it.

‘Something changed in him, he was not the same person when I told him it was over.

'I remember his face clearly – he just looked like he had nothing to live for. It was my first relationship and it was his first relationship.

‘He was definitely in love with me but I’m not sure if I could say I was in love with him – it was typical teenage stuff.

‘Jared used to care about everything, his grades, school, his friends. That was when Jared was a normal person. It all stopped when we broke up.’

She added: ‘There was never any sign of that when we were going out, I would not have dated a weirdo.’

Miss
Hawkes said the couple met in 2004 – when she was 15 and he was 16 – at
a college American football game while both were studying at Mountain
View High School in Tucson, Arizona.

Although he was in the year above, the pair bonded over shared interests such as rock music.

She said: ‘We clicked and we hung out, we did our homework together, we went to the movies. Typical teenage romance stuff.’

Miss Hawkes, who lives in Tucson, near the site where Loughner
carried out his plot, said she learned her ex-boyfriend was the mass
killer when she got a call from her sister.

Accused: Suspect Jared Loughner is alleged to have shot dead six people in a gun rampage in Arizona last weekend

‘I had to go home from work and I cried for the rest of the day,’ she
said. ‘We had such an ordinary high school relationship that to think
of him like that just blows my mind.’

Meanwhile, police revealed today that 22-year-old Loughner was stopped by a wildlife officer at 7.30am - under three hours before he allegedly opened fire.

The officer took Loughner's driver's licence and vehicle registration information but found no outstanding warrants on Loughner or his vehicle, the Arizona Game and Fishing Department said. He was let off without a warning.

It's the latest evidence of Loughner's busy morning before police say he
shot and killed six and wounded more than a dozen at a Tucson grocery
store.

Also that morning, Loughner ran into the desert from his angry
father, who was chasing his son after seeing him remove a black bag from
the trunk of a family car, said Rick Kastigar, chief of the
department's investigations bureau.

Investigators are still searching
for the bag.

Loughner had posted a series of online ramblings last year that surprised other internet users.

'Does anyone have aggression 24/7?' he wrote and joked about knowing how to cut a body open.

Desperate Loughner also revealed he had more than 65 job applications turned down without getting an interview.

He also asked 'If you went to prison right now...What would you be thinking?'

A friend today claimed that suspect Loughner was shooting 'at the world' rather than making a political statement when he allegedly opened fire.

President Obama will speak out at a memorial service in Tucson later in honour of the six people who were killed during the attempted assassination of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Online player: Comments apparently made by Loughner appeared on Earth Empires strategy games

The suspect was a keen player of Earth Empires in which players build their own countries and run the economies in clans.

The
game is built around alliances with other players - and it was on these
forums that he posted the things that were on his mind.

Lougher's 131 bizarre postings on a
messageboard linked to the Earth Empires reveal he was apparently
struggling to find a purpose in his life.

Police
were tonight investigating the messages as he was held on
suspicion of killing six and injuring 13 others on Saturday after
seizing computers from his home.

In postings which appeared between April and June last year, he wrote: 'I bet your hungry....Because i know how to cut a body open and eat you for more then a week [sic]. ;-).'

Well wishes: Flowers and candles have been left outside of University Medical Center in Tucson where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and other victims of the Arizona shooting are being treated

The alleged gunman wrote on May 15 that
he had been out of work for six months - and didn't know where his next
job was going to come from.

But the aggressive posts - which revealed a hatred of the schooling system - did not contain any definite political views.

Some of the postings were so outlandish that they were either mocked or ignored by other web users.

Democrat congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords remains in a critical condition following the shooting.

Victims: Christine Green, Dorothy Morris, U.S. District Judge John Roll, Phyllis Schneck, Dorwin Stoddards and Gabriel Zimmerman were killed during the gun massacre last week